If you’re familiar with the copywriting and marketing world, the chances are you’ve heard of the 5 stages of market awareness…
This was popularized by the famous Eugene Schwartz in his book ‘Breakthrough Advertising’.
Having the knowledge of market awareness when creating any kind of marketing campaign is a surefire way to get an advantage over your competition and maximize your profits.
Here’s the thing –
One of the biggest mistakes that I made when starting out with copy was this – not writing to the level of my reader’s awareness level…
But why is this important?
When creating any marketing campaign, whether it be an email sequence or a series of ads – it’s a good idea to identify where your target market’s awareness level is.
So today, we’re going to breakdown the 5 stages of awareness –
- Unaware
- Problem Aware
- Solution Aware
- Product Aware
- Most Aware
And the best ways to market to each of these stages.
So, let’s begin:
Table of Contents
Unaware:
The first level is unawareness.
This stage of the customer’s awareness is exactly that – unaware.
They’re the coldest part of your funnel and have no idea about the problem that they might be having…
Not only that, but this will be the majority of your audience.
And this will most likely be the most difficult stage of the awareness to sell to as well.
Selling to an unaware audience would be if you were driving traffic to the offer via cold traffic (Think Meta ads and banner ads).
The viewers of these ads have no idea what you’re selling and even don’t know if it would benefit them…
So, it is your job as a marketer or copywriter to subtly suggest what problems they could have (Ethically of course) and show them that your product or service could be the solution to their newfound problem.
Examples of companies that market to this awareness level effectively are companies like Agora Financial and Motley Fool.
How do we market to an unaware audience?
The best way to advertise to an unaware audience is by doing the following:
- Telling stories in your marketing to hook the reader from the beginning.
- Using infotainment in your marketing material. Similar to stories, but taking a more informative approach while entertaining the reader.
This is the most difficult stage of market awareness, so let’s continue to the next stage.
Problem Aware
How do we market to a PRODUCT aware audience?
There are a couple of ways to specifically market to a problem-aware audience and here’s how:
- Hammer home on those pain points that the customer is experiencing and how painful it is to be experiencing what they’re currently experiencing.
- Followed by the benefits of solving that problem and how much better their life would be if they were to solve this problem.
A problem-aware audience is far easier to market to as they are already familiar with what needs fixing, unlike the previous, unaware level.
Another simple and easy way to market to this audience is to offer some kind of low ticket or even free product…
…This then allows you to capture their email address and have a longer time frame to convince them of their problems and how your solution is the best for their problem as opposed to a one-time visitor to a blog post on a product page.
Solution Aware
When you take a look at the solution-aware section of the audience, they know that they have a problem and are actively looking for solutions to solve the problems they’re experiencing.
So, this could be someone who’s experiencing back pain and is searching on Google – “How to solve back pain” or something to that effect.
In this case – if you’re a marketer and you come into contact with a customer or client at this stage, you want to send the, directly to a sales page or product page and give them the opportunity to buy – because they’re ready to buy!
How do we market to a solution-aware audience?
So, if you’re trying to market to this audience, you’re going to do the following:
- Within your marketing, show the reader that you understand their problem.
- Prove that what you have can solve the problem they’re currently facing.
- Then finally, give them the opportunity to buy the product
Product Aware
This audience is aware that they have a problem, know the solution, and even know that you have a product for their problems…
But, they are unsure if your product is the best for them.
And the chances are, they’re plenty of other solutions to their problems in the niche that they’re in, and you’re in danger of being seen as a commodity.
So, you need to think of ways to make yourself stand out from the crowd and win their business…
And the question to ask is, how do you market to this kind of audience?
How do we market to a product-aware audience?
With this being one of the most aware stages of your audience, there are a few key ways to get the sale.
And all the audience needs to know with this is this – will your product or service fix their problems?
So, how can you answer this question? Here’s how:
- Social Proof: You need to prove that your product or service will work for them. An easy way to do this is by showing testimonials or positive reviews of what you’re selling.
- Risk Reversal: This can be effective for every stage – but especially useful if you’re viewed as a commodity. A risk reversal is exactly that, mitigating the risk for the customer. This usually comes in the form of a money-back guarantee if you don’t meet certain requirements or the customer isn’t satisfied.
- Irresistible offer: You need to constantly be searching for ways to differentiate yourself from your competition, and one way to do that is to create an irresistible offer for your services. If this is something you want to learn more about, then I’d recommend picking up this book and this one as well.
Most aware
Then you have the last level of awareness – the most aware.
When you look at this level of market sophistication, they are the most switched on, meaning that if you’re making claims that have already been tried and tested, you’ll get called out pretty quickly.
However, if your products and services are on point, selling to this level of market sophistication is fairly simple…
This is because you don’t have to be making any big claims or doing any story-based marketing –
All the customer or client needs to know is the offer and pricing in order for them to make a decision.
A lot more simple to and to the point.
How do we market to the most aware audience?
The most aware customers of your audience are arguably the easiest to close, here’s how you market to them:
- Same as before – provide them with an irresistible offer
- Let them know what the pricing is for the product or service.
- And then use some kind of FOMO, scarcity, or urgency in your marketing in order to get them to make a decision now.
Quick Recap
Here’s just a quick recap of each stage of the different stages of marketing awareness.
In the table below, I’ve separated each stage and told you how to market to each one.
Hopefully, this is something that you’ll find helpful the next time you’re creating a copy or building out a marketing campaign.
Feel free to save and print it out.
Before you go
That’s it!
Hopefully, you found that useful, and
To end this post, I’ll leave you with a quote from Eugene Schwartz –
“Copy is not written. If anyone tells you ‘you write a copy’, sneer at them. Copy is not written. Copy is assembled. You do not write a copy, you assemble it. You are working with a series of building blocks, you are putting the building blocks together, and then you are putting them in certain structures, you are building a little city of desire for your person to come and live in.”
Got any questions? Leave a comment on this post, DM me on Twitter @EmailMaximalist or just email me at Jamie@EmailMaximalist.com.
